While John Mandeville often blurs myth and reality in his travel account, his description of Cyprus is anchored by fact, emphasizing the island’s historical relevance within the Medieval mind. 

Before detailing his account of Cyprus, Mandeville references the once-great city of Adalia, associating it with a regional myth. He explains that a young man once happened upon the tomb of a beautiful young woman, and laid down beside her before continuing his journey. In a dream, the man was told to revisit the grave or else he would experience great suffering. And yet, when the tomb was reopened, an ugly head escaped and terrorized the city, causing it to sink. Mandeville asserts that this story is the reason for dangerous waterways in the region. The inclusion of this myth serves two purposes: to explain a natural phenomenon and to provide a contrast ahead of Mandeville’s glowing account of Cyprus.

For Mandeville, Cyprus’ importance relies on its status as a Christian nation and its proximity to Jerusalem. Thus, he spends more time highlighting the ethnographic details of Cyprus than he did in previous locations. At the beginning of this chapter, Mandeville mentions Cyprus’ strong vines and noble wine, noting the wine is originally red, but that with each year it becomes whiter, and eventually runs clear. Mandeville associates the visual purification of the wine as a marker of strength. The wine serves as a metaphor for the power and longevity of Christian rule in Cyprus.

Furthermore. Mandeville’s account accentuates Cyprus’ organization. He introduces Cyprus as a large island home to four major cities, three bishops, and one archbishop. Mandeville is clearly impressed by Cyprus’ unity in faith, despite its size, before enumerating several Christian references. He tells his reader about the Mountain of the Holy Cross and the abbey of monks that resides there, in addition to the Castle of Amours, where the bodies of Saint Genovefe and Saint Hilarion lie. Mandeville contends that the Cross of Our Lord is not indeed in Cyprus, contrary to popular knowledge. This assertion reflects Mandeville’s commitment to fact in his description–an attempt to establish his credence as a writer. 

Notably, Cyprus coincides with Mandeville’s first description of hunting and eating practices. He remarks that men hunt with papions, leopard-like cats, that are well-equipped at capturing beasts. He distinguishes papions by their agility and size, in comparison to dogs and lions. Additionally, Mandeville underscores that all men in Cyprus eat their food on the ground because of the heat. And yet, in the presence of foreigners, they eat at tables. Mandeville suggests that although their dining customs are different, that they serve a function to those who practice them.

Mandeville’s account of Cyprus identifies the island as an important stop on the way to the Holy Land. Cyprus’ status as both a major trade hub and as a historically Christian-ruled region makes it significant to Mandeville’s journey. As Mandeville’s travels bring him closer to the Holy Land, he focuses on locations that support his mission as a Christian pilgrim.

In the Kingdom of Manzi we find ourselves in a rather strange spot. Literarilly speaking. Sir John Mandeville, as we will continue to call him, has, so far in the adventures we’ve talked about together, confined himself almost entirely to his own Christian faith. This is due, of course, to his incorporeal nature. Meaning that he is not real. These are the writings of a monk, and now, we get to hear him talk about animals and feasts! He’s not even racist about it! I know! He even, believe it or not, has a conversation. I’m so excited.

He’s not even weird about poor people or other religions’ beliefs about the soul! We can see this in his interaction with a monk, whom I want to assume is Buddhist, given his belief in the reincarnation of the soul and how the life that you lived shapes your next life. He observes their feeding of the animals with the monastery scraps, and he listens and asks questions respectfully. This is delightful.

“The monk said that these animals are the souls of dead men, the gentle and attractive animals being the souls of aristocrats and gentlemen, and those that are ugly being the souls of commoners. I asked him if it would not be better to give these leftovers to poor men than to these animals. He replied that there are no poor men in that country, and, even if there were people who needed alms, it would be better to give it to these souls which suffer their penance there and may not go out and seek food, unlike people who have the knowledge to find food and the capacity to work.” (88)

This quote is interesting because it shows how Sir John Mandeville is able to recognize that poor men are more deserving than beasts, which is great. Leads to a big question: where are all of the disabled people? Does this monk define disabled people as people? He says that people have the knowledge and capacity to work, and yes, most do, but not everyone is able-bodied. My hope is that they’re being accommodated and given good jobs, but sadly, I’m faced with a more likely option. The monk who is writing this work considers a perfect city to be one without any disabled people. We can also observe the classism that the monk exhibits in the assigning of souls to animals, or animals to souls? It is not entirely clear. What is clear is that beauty is linked to morality as well as to class. This gives us the question: in this system of morality, are a person’s actions and character determined by their class, or is their class determined by their character? The more important question is: are we supposed to buy this correlation between class and character? On the surface, the answer is no. The person doing the talking is a monk of a non-Christian religion who is talking about reincarnation, which is not recognized by Catholic doctrine. Looking deeper, the fact that this didn’t actually happen leads me to believe that we are supposed to buy it. A Buddhist monk didn’t say this; a monk created a knight and another monk and put them into conversation. If Sir John Mandeville doesn’t respond, it isn’t due to his lack of a witty retort; the monk has all the time in the world to think of a fiery comeback, it is because the monk is choosing to have him leave this point entirely unchallenged. Also, considering we are very much in the days of kings and queens, it seems to me as if we should be buying it.

So long and thanks for all the fish,

Gev, the Scaled Scorch

Sir John Mandeville’s description of Egypt, the longest description he has given to anywhere, is quite interesting. He still maintains his steady flow of biblical references, of places to which pilgrims might be interested in visiting, but here he also seems interested in adding more ethnographic and historical detail, either sourced from previous accounts or simply invented whole cloth. The subject of the Sultan of Egypt takes up much of his description. He tells that this Sultan rules over five kingdoms (Egypt, called Canopat, Jerusalem, Syria, Aleppo, and Arabia) and provides references to previous rulers or places to help ground this information for his audience. Mandeville then goes on to list the Sultanate’s line of succession, though most of the names he gives are garbled, such as Melechinasser. He also adds references his European audience would be familiar with, such as which European king fought which Sultan, Richard the Lionheart and Saladin for example. Mandeville wants his audience to follow his story, so giving them context for a list of foreign rulers in a land they are completely unfamiliar with aids in one’s understanding of the exotic locations discussed.

Mandeville also writes about the Sultan’s power and court. For example, he claims that the Sultan has three wives (one of which must be a Christian) and can have as many lovers as he pleases, and that he can “lead more than twenty thousand soldiers out of Egypt, and more than fifty thousand soldiers out of Syria, Turkey, and other realms subject to him. These passages must be his invention. How could a person who has never even seen Egypt know how many soldiers he can raise or how his court operates? Mandeville keeps up his persona, though, even claiming that he was a mercenary for the Sultan for a long time. He ads that the Sultan wanted him to marry a local princess and thus abjure his faith, but he refused. This, along with the Sultan’s Christian wife, displays Mandeville’s attitude that the Islamic world poses a sexual challenge to Christians that must be resisted.

A lot of his information about Egypt comes from the Bible and related Christian writings and lore. He identifies the pyramids as “Joseph’s Barns,” a reference to the book of Genesis where Joseph has grain stored for the coming seven years of famine. The association of the pyramids and Joseph’s Barns was long established in Christian writing, and Mandeville repeats what he has read about to his own audience. Interestingly, he notes that some people say the pyramids are tombs, though Mandeville rejects this as baseless. He throws out the correct explanation to reaffirm the commonly held Christian belief about Egypt. Mandeville also borrows information from more secular sources. He regurgitates a story about the phoenix which is said to come to a temple in the city of Heliopolis to regenerate, which he took from a popular description of the mythical animal in a Bestiary. He also provides an ‘Egyptian’ alphabet which shows at least some awareness of Coptic. Mandeville’s description of foreign places is predicated on what information he had access to in Europe, demonstrating his genuine scholarship and curiosity, though to a point. He may be interested in distant places, but not enough to actually ensure what he is writing down is correct. He is willing to trust the established authorities (such as the Bible and previous Christian authors) and in so doing repeats their misinformation to a whole new audience.